348 days until the Big 50

You don’t just get a “best friend.” It is hard work and a lot of luck. But I am all about “relationships” and perhaps that is why I never went to law school, or medical school or accomplished any great task like a marathon or any other “thon”. My focus, time and energy is always spent on people, my mom, my friends, my kids, my cousins…

My best friend is someone I met on the way to kindergarten. Our teacher’s name was Ms. Steinway. At the time, she may have been the only teacher under the age of 60 at DeWitt Clinton School. She seemed nice. It was downhill after that as far as teachers go. Even worse, my best friend and I were separated. It turned out we were not even suppose to be in kindergarten together from the beginning. Kids with last names starting from A to M (me) were suppose to be in the class that spent the first half of the year going to Morning Kindergarten and the second half of the year in afternoon kindergarten. Kids with last names starting with N to Z (my best friend) were on the opposite schedule. Yet, my best friend had just moved into the neighborhood and the classes had already been assigned so somehow she ended up in my group. It would be the only time we were ever in a class together yet our friendship cemented itself on the shiny hardwood floor of the big kindergarten room that year in 1965. And the friendship continued to flourish and evolve over the years amidst the alleys, gang ways and side streets of West Rogers Park.

During our 8 years of grammar school there were three classes for each grade. And you stayed with the same 30 kids from beginning to the end of your grammar school life. We all knew when we left kindergarten we would be saying good-by to something rare at Clinton, a nice teacher. We had heard stories from older siblings and cousins who had already been clearing the path what kind of close encounters with mean and difficult teachers we would be having.
We would be at their mercy. Parental involvement was unheard of back then.

My first grade teacher was Mrs. Masters, an enormous woman with big black hair resembling a helmet. She probably had enough spray on that do to be the inspiration for Ronald Regan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Her hair was so hard bombs would have probably bounced off her head and gone directly back to Russia. She must have hated our 6 year old guts. She never once smiled. That woman was angry about something and I remember our entire first grade class sitting petrified praying for the dismissal bell everyday that year. She would place kids in garbage cans when they misbehaved. Her opinion of exactly what misbehavior was included whispering, looking in the wrong direction, being unattractive and of course, the usual gum chewing. We use to have to sit in small groups at the front of the class during reading time and take turns reading from Dick and Jane books. We were separated based on skill level, so it was always very apparent which group someone was part of, high, medium or low. The smart kids read quickly and with ease. The medium kids varied more in how quickly and readily they performed. The low kids stumbled and mumbled. We were all on display. If it was not your reading group’s turn then you had to sit at your wooden desk nailed firmly to the floor and pretend to read. But what you were really doing was listening in on the reading group that was in a circle at the front of the room. It was impossible not to. So, if you were a lousy reader, you got to be humiliated in front of everyone. I can only imagine what effect that had. Luckily, I liked reading. I just hated Mrs. Master’s more so I somehow ended up in the middle group all the time. It probably had more to do with how nervous she made me than how well I could actually read.

Mrs. Masters would hand out a daily “prize” (balloon, pencil, sticker or a piece of gum you were not allowed to chew) to the best reader within each group. I guess it was her idea of motivation. It would have been better if she would have just learned to smile instead of scowling all the time and kept the lousy balloons and pencils to her big ass self. Luckily, I have gotten over the horrible feelings Mrs. Masters created in me, and First Grade, was just that, First, not second, and not certainly not last. I would have 7 more grades to go. Who, would brighten up my life in 2nd Grade? Stay tuned….